MTA prober hits ‘travel time’ pay

The gravy train keeps chugging. The LIRR allowed a group of its workers to fraudulently rake in tens of thousands of dollars for “travel time’’ — as much as eight hours a shift — while supposedly on the job, thanks to an unofficial and unchecked practice of paying wages for going to and from job sites, said MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny on Friday.

Six LIRR employees reaped the illicit dough, Pokorny said in three newly released reports based on investigations conducted in 2019 and 2020.

The workers were able to enrich themselves thanks to the LIRR’s unofficial “travel time” policy, which is not spelled out in the railroad’s labor contracts, the IG said.

“It’s unfortunate that decades of lax management at the LIRR grandfathered in the expensive practice of paying for employees’ ‘travel time’ — even though such time was not clearly granted by the Collective Bargaining Agreement,” she said in a statement.

“Some employees abused this practice to rack up thousands in fraudulent travel time claims.”

One man was caught collecting regular and OT pay for hours spent away from work on 16 different occasions over three months, for a total of about 43 falsified hours, the IG said.

IG investigators used the GPS on the cheat’s MTA-issued vehicle and found it sitting outside his home while he claimed to be on the clock.

The utility worker retired in 2018 after being contacted by the IG’s office and in January agreed to pay back $20,000 of the approximately $86,000 in OT he collected in his last eight months with the railroad.

The five other employees cited in the reports earned “excessive” travel-time payments totaling $67,910 while under investigation, the IG said.

Despite the IG’s assertion that the hours were dishonestly earned, railroad officials concluded that a portion of them were not in violation of the longstanding “travel time” policy and only recouped around $50,000 in that case.

The findings are the latest salvo in Pokorny’s yearslong war on MTA fraud, which last week landed four LIRR men and one subway worker in handcuffs for alleged federal-program shenanigans.

The MTA told The Post in a statement Friday, “The LIRR has implemented a series of aggressive time and attendance controls to increase oversight and accountability, including a new timekeeping system to verify attendance, enhanced oversight of fleet vehicles, and on-the-spot inspections of work sites.”

It’s unfortunate that decades of lax management at the LIRR grandfathered in the expensive practice.

— MTA IG Carolyn Pokorny